Ozarks Ice Storm 2009

We are making a Bentonville hotel our home for a few days, while we wait for the electric power to return following the ice storm. It's been out over a week now. After a couple of days of working off of battery power, we finally had to come in to town to literally recharge. It started icing over on Monday evening of January 26th. Then by the end of the next day, we had 1 and 1/2 inches of ice sticking to the trees and power lines. Then for the next few days, the forest sounded like a war zone. Trees and branches were breaking with exploding and gunshot sounds every 20 seconds. Our driveway and road was completely blocked off.

We were pretty cozy at home, with the wood stove and propane cook stove. But with no power, the well pump was also out. We had filled our tubs and every spare bucket with water in advance. Then, we started gathering snow and ice to melt inside for our wash water. We had enough battery power and were pretty well prepared for a 3 day power outage - but not for a week!


Last Thursday, we all got together to clear the 1/3 mile road between our house and the kid's house. I counted 4 dozen trees blocking the road. There are still power lines laying in the road going south. The forest service came up and cut a path through. We were able to drive out on Saturday to get to the hotel. This photo shows Ken with his chain saw hiking up the blocked road. The ice was beautiful to look at.